1. The afflictions of the will and predicaments are here also immense and in such a way that sometimes they pierce the soul in the sudden memory of the evils in which it finds itself, with the uncertainty of its remedy. And add to this the memory of past prosperity; because these, ordinarily, when they enter this night, have had many pleasures in God and have done him many services, and this causes them more pain, to see that they are alienated from that good and that they can no longer enter into it. This says Job (16, 1317), also as he experienced it by those words: I, the one who used to be opulent and rich, suddenly am undone and contrite; He seized my neck, broke me and put me as his lure to hurt me; he surrounded me with his spears, he wounded all my loins, he did not forgive, he poured out my entrails on the earth, he tore me apart like sore upon sore; he charged into me like a strong giant; I sewed a sack on my skin, and covered my flesh with ashes; my face is swollen with tears and my eyes are blinded.
2. So many and so serious are the sorrows of tonight, and there are so many authorities in Scripture that could be alleged for this purpose, that we would lack time and strength writing, because without a doubt all that can be said is less. By the already mentioned authorities it will be possible to guess something of it.
And to go concluding with this verse and giving to understand more what works in the soul tonight, I will say what Jeremiah feels in it (Lm. 3, 120), which because it is so much, he says it and cries for many words in this way: I, a man, who see my poverty in the rod of his indignation, has threatened me, and brought me into darkness, and not into light. He So much he has come back and turned his hands on me all day! He made my skin and my flesh old, he crushed my bones; around me he made fence, and surrounded me with gall and work; in darkness he placed me, like the everlasting dead. He closed in around me because he did not come out, he aggravated my prisons. And also, when he has cried out and prayed, he has excluded my prayer. Closing my exits and pathways with square stones: it disrupted my steps. Lurking bear is made for me, lion in hiding. My footsteps upset and crumbled me, made me helpless, stretched out his bow, and put me as a decoy for his arrow. He threw into my bowels the daughters of his quiver. I am made for the ridicule of all the people, and for laughter and mockery of them all day. Filling me with bitterness, he intoxicated me with absinthe. He broke my teeth by number, he grazed me with ashes. Thrown is my soul of peace, forgotten I am of goods. And I said: frustrated and finished is my end and claim and my hope of the Lord. Remember my poverty and my excess, the absinthe and the gall. I have remembered with memory, and my soul in me will dissolve in sorrows.
3. All these tears make Jeremiah about this work, in which he paints very vividly the passions of the soul in this purgation and spiritual night. From where great compassion is convenient to have the soul that God puts in this stormy and horrendous night; because, although he has great happiness because of the great benefits that will be born of it when, as Job says (12, 22), God will raise up deep benefits in the soul of darkness and produce in light the shadow of death, of so that, as David says (Ps. 138, 12), come to be his light as were his darkness; with all this, with the immense pain with which he is suffering, and because of the great uncertainty that he has of his remedy (because he believes, as this prophet says here, that his evil will not end, it seems to him, as David also says (Ps. 142, 3), that God placed her in the darkness, like the dead of the century, her spirit being anguished by this, and her heart troubled in her), it is to have great pain and pity for her.
Because it is added to this, because of the loneliness and helplessness that causes her in this dark night, not finding comfort or comfort in any doctrine or spiritual teacher; because, although in many ways I testify to him the causes of the consolation that he can have for the goods that are in these sorrows, he cannot believe it. Because, as she is so absorbed and immersed in that feeling of evil in which she sees her miseries so clearly, it seems to her that, since they do not see what she sees and feels, not understanding her, they say that, and instead of consolation, before he receives new pain, it seems to him that this is not the remedy for his illness, and in truth it is. Because until the Lord finishes purging her in the way that he wants to do, no means or remedy of hers will serve or take advantage of her pain; how much more, that the soul can do so little in this position like the one imprisoned in a dark dungeon, tied hand and foot, unable to move or see, or feel any favor from above or below, until here it humbles itself, softens and purify the spirit, and become so subtle and simple and thin, that it can become one with the spirit of God, according to the degree that his mercy wants to grant him of union of love, which according to this is the purgation more or less strong and of more or less time.
4. But, if it has to be something really, no matter how strong it is, it lasts a few years; since in these means there are interpolations of reliefs, in which by God's dispensation, leaving this dark contemplation of attacking in purgative form and manner, it attacks illuminatively and lovingly, in which the soul, either as exit from such a dungeon and such prisons, and Placed in recreation of width and freedom, feel and taste great softness of peace and loving friendliness with God with easy abundance of spiritual communication.
Which is to the soul an indication of the health that the said purgation is working in it and I prenounce the abundance that awaits. And even, that this is so much sometimes, that it seems to the soul that their works are finished. Because of this quality are spiritual things in the soul, when they are more purely spiritual, that when they are works, it seems to the soul that they will never come out of them, and that its goods have already run out, as has been seen by the alleged authorities; and, when they are spiritual goods, it also seems to the soul that its evils have come to an end, and that it will no longer lack goods, as David (Ps. 29, 7), seeing himself in them, confessed it, saying: I said in my abundance: I will not move forever.
5. And this happens because the current possession of an opposite in the spirit, of itself, removes the current possession and feeling of the other contrary; This is not the case in the sensitive part of the soul, since it is weak with apprehension. But, since the spirit is not yet well purged and cleansed here of the affections that it has contracted from the lower part, although as a spirit it does not change, as soon as it is affected with them it can change into sorrows, as we see later David moved (Ps. 29, 7), feeling many evils and sorrows, although in the time of his abundance it had seemed to him and said that he would never move. Thus the soul, as it then sees itself acted with that abundance of spiritual goods, not seeing the root of imperfection and impurity that it still has left, thinks that its work is finished.
6. But this thought occurs the fewest times, because, until the spiritual purification is finished, very rarely is the soft communication so abundant that it covers the remaining root, so that the soul stops feeling there in Inside, I don't know what she lacks or what she is about to do, which does not allow her to fully enjoy that relief, feeling inside her as an enemy of hers, who, although he is calm and asleep, is suspicious that he will revive and do of yours And so it is that, when it is safer and less tasted, it swallows and absorbs the soul again in another degree worse and harder, darker and pitiful than the past, which lasts another season, perhaps longer than the first. And here the soul again comes to believe that all goods are finished forever; that the experience he had of the good past that he enjoyed after his first job, in which he also thought that there was no more to suffer, was not enough for him to stop believing in this second degree of trouble that everything was over and that he would not return as last time. Because, as I say, this confirmed belief is caused in the soul by the current apprehension of the spirit, which annihilates in it everything that is contrary to her.
7. This is the reason why those who lie in purgatory have great doubts that they will ever leave there and that their sorrows will end. Because, although they habitually have the three theological virtues, which are faith, hope and charity, the actuality they have of the feeling of God's sorrows and privation does not allow them to enjoy the actual good and consolation of these virtues. Because, although they see that they want God well, this does not console them; because it seems to them that God does not love them nor that they are worthy of such a thing; before, since they see themselves deprived of it, placed in their miseries, it seems to them that they have very good in themselves why they are hated and rejected by God with good reason forever.
And so, the soul in this purgation, although it sees that it wants God well and that it would give a thousand lives for him (as is true, because in these works these souls truly love their God), yet it does not This is relief, before it causes more pain; because, loving him so much, that she has nothing else to worry about, since she looks so miserable, not being able to believe that God loves her, nor that he has and will never have a reason, but first he has to be hated, no only of him, but of every creature forever, it hurts to see in herself causes why she deserves to be discarded from whom she loves and desires so much.